Both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate have passed appropriation bills to fund the budget for Fiscal Year 2019, which begins in October 2019, and both bills call for $11 billion to fund Social Security’s operating budget, which is a cut from the current fiscal year.
The House and the Senate, which are both under Republican control, mirror President Donald Trump’s own budget that also calls for $11 billion for Social Security. This is an approximate $400 million reduction in operating funds for Social Security and it looks like the trend of Social Security having to do more with less will continue.
Despite Trump’s promise that he would not touch Social Security, he is in fact offering $400 million less in funding with his proposed budget. If you factor in that an inflationary increase in Social Security’s budget would be about $330 million at 2.9 percent, then Social Security is really seeing about a $730 million reduction in the operating budget while it attempts to provide services, but at the same time attempt to reduce the massive backlog of applicants waiting for a disability hearing.
As you can see here, Trump’s proposal directly targets the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program. Specific proposals include:
- Limiting the retroactivity of applications for disability benefits from 12 months to six months (This proposal would cut SSDI benefits by an average of $7,000 for beneficiaries affected by this change);
- Denial of unemployment compensation payments to certain SSDI beneficiaries (This proposal would affect SSDI beneficiaries who work but get laid off – and as a result — qualify for Unemployment Insurance.); and
- Unreasonably capping the amount payable to individuals who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) while living with other SSI recipients (Average SSI benefits are $555 per month or $18.50 per day. The maximum SSI payment is $750 a month, which is 75 percent of the federal poverty guideline for a single person. Under this proposal, if SSI recipients lived together – including families – their benefits could be reduced beyond what is reasonable.)
The SSDI program is not the only popular program the president wants to cut funds from. His budget also calls for about $500 billion in cuts to Medicare and specifically includes:
- Establishing a uniform payment system for post-acute care providers – skilled nursing facilities, home health agencies, inpatient rehabilitation hospitals and long-term care hospitals, saving $80.2 billion over 10 years;
- Implementing a new system for Medicare payments to home health agencies, saving $16.7 billion over 10 years;
- Modifying Medicare payments to hospitals for uncompensated care, saving $69.5 billion over 10 years; and
- Reducing Medicare payments to institutional providers from 65 percent to 25 percent of bad debts that are due to beneficiaries’ non-payment of deductibles and coinsurance, saving $37 billion over l0 years.
Both the Senate and House have to get together on the different appropriation budgets they have passed. A conference committee will be the final decider for the Fiscal Year 2019 budget, but so far, both houses of Congress seem to share the president’s plan to provide less money to Social Security rather than more.
